Gray Mann has set his sights on a Mann Co. shipping vessel, and has mounted a carrier tank on his own ship to pull it off. Your job is to fight off Gray Mann's army on a large shipping vessel in the middle of the ocean.

Oh, and there aren't any lifeboats, so if the vessel sinks... Yeah, just try not to let that happen.

Made for the Mappers vs Machines contest. See the overview section for more info and screenshots.

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Last edited: Apr 28, 2017

If a trigger_hurt is used to kill players, then could it be called... a brush with death? Eh?

Alpha 1a: Quick Fix and New Mission
Just a small update containing a few small changes as well as a brand new, self-made advanced mission.
-Changed some of the bot spawn points into spawnbot_mission_sniper and spawnbot_mission_spy
-Made the doorway for the upper bomb hatch room entrance taller so that giant robots can fit
-Added a new mission: Oceanic Onslaught (see more info in Overview section)

We left a bunch of feedback on the map that you can get from the MvM server itself but let me summarize some of the biggest issues I can remember from the top of my head:

- Missing packed custom content - there were ERROR signs in front of the bot spawn. We speculated that there's supposed to be a crane there judging by its height and geometry. Restart TF2 and use sv_pure 2 to check that your map has the necessary content packed in.

- The map is way too short. It's literally walk in a straight line for 10 seconds from the bomb hole and there's the bot spawn. It's less than half the size of decoy (roughly the distance from decoy's hatch to the middle building I think). You can certainly double or triple its length and make it one giant cargo ship. In doing so, you can make interesting bot paths with elevation differences and such, make one end of the ship the bot spawn and the other end of the ship the bomb hole.

- The bot dropoff point is rather uninteresting in terms of geometry. Having bots come from all angles than just the right can spice up things (sort of like how rottenburg has 2 distinct spawns).

- Too many cargo crates in the middle. Remove like 2/3 of them and use them to give players cover, make distinctive bot paths, etc. Stacking them all in the middle doesn't serve much purpose. You can have small stacks of them here and there for decorative purposes but a giant stack of crates like that is unnecessary.

- On topic of the cargo crates: the players have way too excessive of a height advantage at the front lines. This height advantage would be more appropriate in the middle of the path as the bots make way to the hatch (if the map is to be made longer), but it's completely unnecessary at the front lines. It makes defending way too easy. Players don't need 3 cargo crates' height of a height advantage.

- The bomb hatch doesn't explode, and there was a bug where right when the bomb bot walked into the hatch area it marked as wave failure without the bot doing the deploying animation (the demo recording should have evidence of this; I think it happened on wave 1 attempt 1).

- Player spawn seems weird with a very very tall staircase leading down to the bomb hole. It also gives them another really bad height advantage over the bots. I think the idea is interesting but it can be better executed - perhaps maybe by lowering the elevation difference?

- Need bigger health and ammo kits and they need to be placed in more obvious spots. I think we only used the kits in the middle of the crate pile and the giant ammo pack near the ERROR's.

- There are ramps but no props to suggest that they exist. It's like walking up through the air.

- Don't make bots walk up tiny ramps. A pyro can easily push them off and thus require them to walk all the way around again.

- Not sure if this is intentional, but it's possible to fall into the ocean near the tank entrance.

- It is possible for a soldier or demoman to knock small bots (commonly bonk scouts) into the ocean due to knockback pushing them off of the ship. I thought this was kind of cool but it also could be a bug where you forgot to clip the sides. The demo recording has one or two incidents where I as a soldier reset the bomb by knocking the bomb bot off of the ship.

As for your advanced mission:

- You don't need 10 waves; 6-7 waves will do (if 7, consider the 7th being a short finale or a boss).

- The 15 tank wave was amusing but also became tedious and boring too soon. You can probably fit that in as a finale for another wave if you wanted to.

- Why was the soldier boss using a rocket jumper?

- I would say you can literally combine two adjacent waves together (wave 1+2, wave 3+4, wave 5+6, etc) to make a 4 wave mission and leave the last 2 waves alone. The waves themselves need a lot more substance to push players back (wave 1 surprisingly did this, but the latter waves not so much).

- Look at the Valve advanced waves and see how they use various bot templates (not necessarily balanced ones - see 2 cities - but still a variety nonetheless) and how they last quite a bit of time. In comparison your waves lasted like 1-2 minutes each and had very few templates. During the 15 tank wave after the 15th tank died there was one lone bat scout that came in. Why did you even bother to put 1 scout?

In general, you have a pretty good theme going with a lot of potential and good ideas but the execution is... let's say... less than subpar. Making the map longer and giving the waves a good rework are two good steps you can take; the rest can follow through later.

We left a bunch of feedback on the map that you can get from the MvM server itself but let me summarize some of the biggest issues I can remember from the top of my head:

Click to expand...

I did see the feedback, unfortunately I've had a busy weekend (busier than I anticipated) and I haven't been able to watch the Demo or even pump out an emergency update with the models packed, but I have read through the feedback and the chat log on the feedback website.

- Missing packed custom content - there were ERROR signs in front of the bot spawn. We speculated that there's supposed to be a crane there judging by its height and geometry. Restart TF2 and use sv_pure 2 to check that your map has the necessary content packed in.

Click to expand...

I could have sworn up and down that the custom content was packed, but perhaps I unpacked a little too much when I was trying to remove the navmesh...

- The bomb hatch doesn't explode, and there was a bug where right when the bomb bot walked into the hatch area it marked as wave failure without the bot doing the deploying animation (the demo recording should have evidence of this; I think it happened on wave 1 attempt 1).

Click to expand...

Yes, I haven't set up the bomb hatch to explode yet. I'll see if I can fix the deployment animation, though. I never ran into this problem, but I suspect it has to do with a recent change to the navigation mesh.

- It is possible for a soldier or demoman to knock small bots (commonly bonk scouts) into the ocean due to knockback pushing them off of the ship. I thought this was kind of cool but it also could be a bug where you forgot to clip the sides. The demo recording has one or two incidents where I as a soldier reset the bomb by knocking the bomb bot off of the ship.

Click to expand...

It was intentional, but I will consider clipping off the sides of the boat.

- Look at the Valve advanced waves and see how they use various bot templates (not necessarily balanced ones - see 2 cities - but still a variety nonetheless) and how they last quite a bit of time. In comparison your waves lasted like 1-2 minutes each and had very few templates. During the 15 tank wave after the 15th tank died there was one lone bat scout that came in. Why did you even bother to put 1 scout?

In general, you have a pretty good theme going with a lot of potential and good ideas but the execution is... let's say... less than subpar. Making the map longer and giving the waves a good rework are two good steps you can take; the rest can follow through later.

Click to expand...

Yup, I will do. Thanks for all the feedback!

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If a trigger_hurt is used to kill players, then could it be called... a brush with death? Eh?

I could have sworn up and down that the custom content was packed, but perhaps I unpacked a little too much when I was trying to remove the navmesh...

Click to expand...

UPDATE: So I checked in TF2 with sv_pure 2, and the custom content was missing. So I went into VIDE and checked the file, but it said that the custom content was packed... You can see more here.
EDIT: The problem's (hopefully) fixed now. I tested it with sv_pure 2, but if someone else would like to test it as well to be sure that would be nice. Now I can move on to the rest of the feedback.

Last edited: May 2, 2017

If a trigger_hurt is used to kill players, then could it be called... a brush with death? Eh?

Alpha 1c: Please Work...
Fixed the problem with custom content not being packed, apparently I've been doing it wrong this whole time. Hopefully it will FINALLY work now...
-Fixed a problem with packed custom content

Alpha 2: Massive Layout Changes
A bunch of changes, some massive, some less massive, and some that will barely be noticed. This is mostly based on feedback that I received from the MvM gameday, as well as some other bugs that I noticed while testing. Hopefully I won't have to add 3 hotfix updates like I did with A1...
-Adjusted both missions, with much larger changes to the advanced mission (Oceanic Onslaught)
-Added a smaller boat opposite the carrier tank boat that functions as a second robot spawn
-Added clipping to the crane in front of the robot spawn and a ramp to allow players to easily get on top
-Shifted some health and ammo packs around
-Rearranged and removed some shipping crates
-Added a wall between the shipping crates and the front area
-Completely redesigned the indoor area to make it longer and larger
-Added engineer bot nests in the indoor area
-Tanks no longer spawn in midair
-Replaced some of the less visible cargo crates with dev-textured brushes for optimization purposes
-Deleted parts of the navigation mesh that giants cannot walk under
-Moved some of the teleporter exit bot hints away from walls to (hopefully) prevent larger robots from getting stuck in the wall when spawning

We ran this on the Potato's server earlier today and I have a couple thoughts:

First off, we basically never got pushed back past the first area, so every other part of the map ended up not getting used at all. You need to include a much more difficult popfile to ensure that most players get pushed back past the first area. Bigrock's advanced missions are a good choice for both difficulty and compatibility. (Good post expanding on this)

And on the topic of the first area: it's far too small. Even without the crane in the middle of it, there was so little breathing room that all the robots ended up being clustered together, making it even easier to spam them endlessly. Also, while I was playing as Engineer, I was really struggling to find good spots to place my buildings. There's nowhere to set up comfortably - no high ground for sentries, no cover for dispensers, and not many places to even put a teleporter exit.

First off, we basically never got pushed back past the first area, so every other part of the map ended up not getting used at all. You need to include a much more difficult popfile to ensure that most players get pushed back past the first area.

Click to expand...

Which mission did you play? I included 2 popfiles, 1 normal and 1 advanced. The normal one plays by default.

If a trigger_hurt is used to kill players, then could it be called... a brush with death? Eh?

Alpha 3: The Bigening
Made the front and sides of the boat slightly larger to make room for stuff, as well as implemented other feedback.
-Added more space to the front of the boat (as a side effect, it also slightly widens the side routes)
-Fixed a gap in the wall above the upgrade stations
-Increased the water texture scale
-Slightly widened the staircases in the ship
-Bomb carrier will no longer walk onto the crane
-Added a small staircase to get up on the side platforms so bots don't get caught up trying to jump onto them
-Fixed bots jumping down instead of using the wooden plank when taking the upper right path
-Added a forward upgrade station that is only available between waves
-Replaced the invisible texture under the carrier tank with blockbullets
-Moved the bot teleporter hints farther away from the walls
-Fixed one of the teleporter hints still being up against the wall
-Added a generator prop to the back of the bomb hatch room to allow scouts to jump up onto the flank
-Adjusted the lighting to be less irritating and brighten up some areas that were dark

Alpha 4: The Birthday Update
I couldn't think of a name, so since this update is being released on the day after my birthday, I decided to call it "The Birthday Update" and chuck in an obligatory birthday easter egg.
-Removed the sliding doors on the side bomb routes in the building
-Removed the wall near the front and the forward upgrade station (for now; I'll probably bring back the forward upgrade station)
-Lowered the front area of the cargo crate stack
-Added a birthday hat sitting on the cargo crates; shooting it causes it to play a birthday sound
-Slightly refined clipping around the cargo crates
-Fixed and refined the navigation mesh and blocked areas around the indoor stairs
-Blockbulleted all of the cargo crates, including ones that the player cannot stand on
-Lowered the elevated area in the center of the crate stack and widened it out
-Slightly adjusted sniper and sentry spots and added new sniper spots on the crane
-Changed the water texture and adjusted the scale